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3 Of the Four Temperaments.
Ill OF THE FOUR TEMPERAMENTS We recall the manner in which these Masters have compared, in lines at once profound and beautiful, the autumn of life and the twilight of the day and the year, to the sadness of the Nervous type amid the historic decadences; the winter to the aged Lymphatic approaching life's nighttime; the spring, in its morning, to some Neitzschean adolescent, choleric and barbaric, and noon or midsummer to the Sanguine in the enjoyment of life, careless and forgetful, in his ephemeral strength, of the weakness of the past and the future. The Nervous type suggests to our minds Asia, lyrical and mystical, subtle, fond of silks, of tea and coffee, of hasheesh and opium, creator of paradises, religious and artificial. His transparent skin, delicate and smooth to the touch, suggests ivory. We note the large eyes, the high forehead, the head broad at the back, the contracted and trembling motions of his handwriting, hesitant, narrow, angular, full of flourishes; the hearing developed more than the other senses (which are often defective). We hear his voice low and vibrant, serious; his incertitude of motion extending also to his language, which is interspersed with hesitant "ahs." We array him, this man of the eastern plains, in melancholy greens, in blacks or silken stuffs of strange design. Neuroses and hallucinations do not surprise us in this being whose cerebral constitution is feminine, nor do the mental zigzags so illogical in appearance, the forgetfulness of the principal parts of his discourse, the confusion, the perpetual recommencement. The character, imaginative above all, has those flashes of intuition which Goethe attributed to that one of his four principles which he called the DEMONIAC. Aristocratic, sensitive, we do not tire of his confidences, of his incurably LYRIC nature, of his tendency at first to deny and spurn that which later enraptures him, nor of his mysticism, so in accord with the elliptic turn of his mind, suggestive and stimulating. In short, we admire in him the echo of that which is most human in the animal nature. With the Bilious type we turn, on the contrary, towards the Occident, ambitious, hardy and conquering, more brutal but keenly logical, forceful in language, imperious; the veritable muscle of humanity. We remark the aquiline nose, the deep-set eyes, commanding and far-sighted, the salient Napoleonic chin, the ruggedness of visage which reminds us of roughly sculptured stone. In the broad forehead we see the spirit of domination, of headstrong argument. The gestures are precise and definite, the handwriting clear and firm, with short well-made strokes; the speech brief and sententious, hammered out syllable by syllable, yet sometimes with a pontifical and majestic quality. We notice how firmly-woven fabrics in the pronounced and classic colors (reds and bright blues) cling and hang upon this muscular figure with its powerful biceps. Such a temperament, idealistic but dogmatic and authoritative, aspires above all to establish and assert itself. Its weakness lies in its mania for deducing all things from a single principle, with a logic more or less exact, but relentless even before the absurdity of the results. We may observe a rapport between the fickleness so characteristic of the Sanguine Tempera ment and that of the Negro race. We find in this type, in southern lands, a jesting disposition, a tendency to hasty and exaggerated affirmations, vivacity, sociability, a love of strong and variegated colors, of gaudy gold-trimmed uniforms and plumes, of tinsel decorations, of theatricals and dramatic scenes; a democratic and turbulent spirit, practical instincts, a habit of sophistry and pretense (both to himself and others), easy morals, scepticism, a proneness to impulsive folly, a character by turns audacious and cowardly. The flesh tints are warm, the skin pliant to the touch, almost oily, the movements vigorous and agile, whence the handwriting of round open letters, often illegible, however, because of its rapidity. The noisy speech is well adapted to sudden flares of anger, to quarrels, jests and arguments. His sense of smell is keen, his taste is for highly spiced food. We clothe him in conspicuous and amusing costumes. For the rest, we may heartily praise his initiative, his gaiety, his energy, his practical habits, his adaptability to all circumstances. The Lymphatic, lastly, we discover near the Poles (or at least near that one toward which humanity withdrew before the great sea which anciently advanced upon it from the south). It is under the snowy skies of the north that we find dispassionate, patient souls, deep thoughts (sometimes vague and misty on contact with others), didactics, the scientific spirit, the memory well developed but encumbered with documentary facts; utilitarianism, slow speech, heavy gestures, interminable sentences, and a disposition to long and sometimes dreamy discourses. The handwriting is negligently traced, without firmness, the letters rather broad than high ; the style is descriptive. The weak point of such a type is its dullness. Regularity of life, realism in philosophy, a utilitarian indifference in politics, an inclination to endless study, a strongly developed sense of taste, a liking for soft clothing and soft colors such as rose and grey-blue, pallid flesh, cold and soft to the touch, these characterize this northern or mountain type, which may be compared to the fish or the reptile in the animal world or to the humid sea-wrack in the vegetable world. Our analysis even forms a sort of Crystallography of Human Traits, which furnishes the artist with elements analogous to those just evolved for the student of human souls. Thus will be understood the four following schemes or caricatures. (Page 74.) As we see, the profile is divided into four regions : occiput, sinciput, nose, jaw. I have apportioned, theoretically, the upper half of each of these parts to the signs of the Bilious and the Lymphatic (B and L), and the lower half to the lines of the Nervous and the Sanguine (N and S). These lines consist, for the Bilious and Nervous, in CONVEXITIES; for the Lymphatic and the Sanguine in CONCAVITIES. It will be remarked, not without surprise, that this plan, so simple, gives also the four characteristic physiognomies of the four traditional Temperaments. We have now but to continue over the entire body. The anatomists and draughtsmen have long pointed out certain correspondences of form, not absolute, but frequent, between the three elements of the TRIADS into which the whole human body is divided and then subdivided. Thus, first the Head, the Thorax and the Abdomen respectively supporting, 1st: the two crooked bones which by their joining in front form the lower jaw; 2nd: the arms, and 3rd: the legs. Each of these pairs of members divides itself again into THREE: the thigh, the leg and the foot; the arm, the forearm and the hand; the perpendicular part of the lower jaw, the horizontal part and the part in which the teeth are set. The teeth correspond also to the phalanges of the fingers and the toes. We know that each finger in turn has THREE phalanges, etc. Now, we usually find a correspondence of conformation, in an individual, between the parts of his various members (knees and elbows, wrists and ankles, etc.) and between the extremities or the central regions of his diverse parts: it is this which gives so special an aspect, for example, to the hand of a hunchback. We may then sketch also, from head to feet, four human beings in whom the two concavities and the two convexities, upper and lower (by which we have already characterized in occiput, sinciput, nose and jaw our Lymphatic, Sanguine, Bilious and Nervous) will continue to show themselves in the outlines of the shoulder-blades, the chest, the pelvis and the abdomen ; then of the two posterior and the two anterior halves of the thighs ; the arms, forearms, legs; even of each phalange; in a word, in every one of the parts into which we have just divided the human silhouette. Finally, each of these parts, as we have seen, is divided into four regions: lower posterior, upper posterior; lower anterior, upper anterior. These respectively appertain, in a greater or less degree, to the signs of the Lymphatic, the Nervous, the Bilious and the Sanguine. Let it be said once more, it is not a question of exact and inevitable concordance, but of establishing FOUR FUNDAMENTAL TYPES, which will extend the human Proportions, theoretically and ideally, and will be a point of departure for the variations which may be executed within the limits of these proportions. Still less is it a question of an infallible process for the divination of character by facial traits, since, we repeat, the "character" is but a habit or group of habits fixed upon a human being, and not the being himself, who in spite of it remains complete, and capable of taking, with greater or less pliancy, other habits and other attitudes. The physiognomy is but the envelope or cover, so to speak, formed by habit (especially hereditary), and less quickly modified than the habit itself, although infinitely more so than we think, and than the too uniform life of our civilization lets appear.